Notting Hill

• 1948 - British Nationality Act
• British Nationality act allowed people from the Commonwealth to come to Britain without restrictions.
• World War two left Britain exhausted after years of fighting, Britain was £21 billion in debt and in desperate need of rebuilding
• There was a severe shortage of workers and housing in Britain after World War 2
• Germany bombing raids killed 43,000 in Britain and in London alone 70,000 buildings were destroyed and the Blitz left 1 in 6 Londoners homeless
• Rebuilding would take decades and need THOUSANDS of workers
• There was a severely depleted workforce in the UK: due to a lot of married women leaving wartime jobs and other workers retiring after World war 2
• Postwar hardships saw 1.5 million emigrate to Australia and Canada
• 1948 BRITISH NATIONALITY act


  Gave everyone in the Commonwealth the right to live and to work in the UK
• Reasons for Caribbean people to leave

  • Lack of jobs due to draining of natural resources by the British Empire over hundreds of years
  • Best jobs often went to white migrants from Britain rather than local black people
  • Wages were very low
• Reasons for Caribbean people to come to the UK

  • Saw Britain as the 'mother country' as Caribbean schools taught British history, not black people's African history
  • Short-term migrant work was normal to send money home
  • British firms advertised in the Caribbean, despite the UK government discouraging it
  • Wages were 3 to 4 times more in the UK
• Where Caribbean migrants ended up working

  • London Transport as bus and train drivers and bus conductors
  • The NHS as nurses, with 5,000 Jamaican nurses working in the UK by 1965
• There were no anti-discrimination laws yet in the UK, so black people often did low-skilled jobs they were overqualified for and faced lower wages than white people doing the same job
• Bans called colour bars were often used to restrict employment and housing for black people
• How the police dealt with three key issues in the 1950s that brought racial tensions in Notting Hill to a boiling point

  • Black people in Notting Hill felt the police did nothing to protect them from attacks by racist groups such as the Teddy Boys, the white Defense League and Oswald Mosley's fascist union movement
  • The last two groups deliberately set up offices in Notting Hill to stir up local racial tensions
  • Two weeks in August 1958 witnessed some of the UK's worst race riots
• The trigger for the riots

  A fight over a mixed race couple
• Hundreds of white youths targeted black homes and black people who tried to defend their neighborhoods were angered by also being labeled rioters by the police
• Of the 108 arrested, 72 were white
• In May 1959, Kelo Cochran was stabbed by white youths who were never caught
• Many in the black community were angry that like the riots, the police were more concerned with denying there was a racial motive, probably to prevent more riots
• The Mangrove 9


  A group of people who were charged with inciting a riot during a protest march in Notting Hill in 1970
• The Mangrove was a popular restaurant in Notting Hill run by Frank Crichlow, and was an important meeting place for the local black community
• The Mangrove faced frequent and unjust police raids, like most black-owned businesses
• The British Black Panthers organized a protest march in August 1970 in response to the police raids


  1. Police arrested many during the march

  2. Nine were charged with inciting a riot, probably as a warning to others
• The nine charged, known as the Mangrove 9, took the unprecedented step of deciding to defend themselves in court
• In the trial, the nine defendants successfully highlighted the weaknesses in the evidence against them and were all acquitted
• The Mangrove 9's victory


  Was a landmark in British black civil rights, as the judge acknowledged there was racism within the police
• The Mangrove 9's victory inspired others to continue the fight against injustice